Immediately after cutting plastic materials in heated fluid condition into pellets by equipment, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,753,637, the essential problem is not only to cool the pellets but to handle them during cooling without permitting any opportunity to stick together until they are sufficiently cool and dry as to be mutually non-adhereable under ordinary conditions of storage and commercial transit. Agglomeration of pellets while in a tacky condition is a constant hazard under present commercial processes of hot-pelletizing. Hence, it is an essential object of this invention to provide process and apparatus by which heat sensitive potentially-agglomerative pellets may be obtained in a cooled, dry mutually non-adhereable, separated condition in which the pellets may be packaged, stored or transported.